What were the main causes and overall effects of the 1960 chilean
tsunami?
The tsunami was generated the by Chile earthquake of 1960, the largest
earthquake ever recorded (it was magnitude 9.6). What happened in the
earthquake was that a piece of the Pacific seafloor (or strictly speaking,
the Nazca Plate) about the size of California slid fifty feet beneath the
continent of South America. Like a spring, the lower slopes of the South
American continent offshore snapped upwards as much as twenty feet while
land along the Chile coast dropped about ten feet. This change in the shape
of the ocean bottom changed the shape of the sea surface. Since the sea
surface likes to be flat, the pile of excess water at the surface collapsed
to creat a series of waves--the tsunami.
The tsunami, together with the coastal subsidence and flooding, caused
tremendous damage along the Chile coast, where about 2,000 people died. The
waves spread outwards across the Pacific. 15 hours later the waves flooded
Hilo, on the island of Hawaii, where they built up to thirty feet and
caused 61 deaths along the waterfront. Seven hours after that (22 hours
after the earthquake) the waves flooded the coastline of Japan where
ten-foot waves caused 200 deaths. The waves also caused damage in the
Marquesas, in Samoa, and in New Zealand. Tide gauges throughout the Pacific
measured anomalous oscillations for about three days as the waves bounced
from one side of the ocean to the other.
Dr. Gerard Fryer
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics & Planetology
University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822